Chapter 4
Lucian
Did she seriously just “good boy” me?
My hound eats it up like his favorite meal, but the only thing I want to do is gag. What the hell has gotten into him? However diluted it is, she still has angel blood running through her veins. She comes from the very beings we’ve spent our entire existence hating.
She clearly didn’t inherit any angelic powers, or else she wouldn’t have gotten hurt by that piece of shit and wouldn’t have needed our protection. But even if she isn’t in this realm to wreak havoc, we should steer clear.
This obsession my hound has with the nephilim won’t end well.
Still, I can admit the feelings she invokes are confusing. Hatred and intrigue. And something even stronger from my hound, though he’s trying to hide whatever it is by keeping me blocked.
The nephilim takes the offered towel from the other blonde who just arrived and wraps it around herself.
“Jesus, Cara. What happened to your head?”
Cara. It’s a pretty name. One I’ve only heard a few times—which is saying a lot, considering my job as a professor. Even though I know nothing about her, somehow I sense the name suits her. I shake my head. Foolish idiot. It’s just a name. Nothing more.
When I glance back, all three people are looking at me.
“Do you have an owner?” Cara asks, and I tilt my head, offended by her accusation.
An owner. Please. No one owns a hellhound. But I can’t exactly speak in this form, at least not to her, so I do my best imitation of an eye roll.
She laughs, cooing at me like I’m the cutest fucking thing, and then says, “Well I can’t just leave you here in the cold. Do you want to come home with me?”
Her question catches me off guard. Do I? The short answer is no. She has no clue what she’s inviting into her home, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe this is the in I need to find out once and for all if she’s aware of the evil blood flowing through her veins.
It’s not like it really matters what I think, though, because my hound absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, wants to go home with her. We let out a small huff of breath and then limp toward the open car door and enter the towel-covered back seat.
“Is this a good idea?” the other girl asks, like she can sense my intentions.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But that animal saved me tonight, and I’m not going to abandon it now.”
I try to keep to my side of the car, but it’s cramped, and Cara’s hand finds my head once she’s buckled in.
We don’t take off right away; instead, we just sit there, the heat blasting through the vents.
She’s shivering, but I can’t tell if it’s the wet clothes making her shake or the possibility of exactly what Brad almost did.
“Okay, spill,” the other blonde says, turning completely around to face the back seat.
Cara pets me absentmindedly as she tells her friends the horrific story of how fucking Brad played the innocent, nice guy only to reveal his true nature when they were alone. Now that I know exactly how disgusting he is, I wish I had eaten him. He deserved far more than what he got from me.
Her friends seem to agree. The girl, Reagan, I think, is pissed.
She vows to track Brad down and expose him for the scum that he is, but I suspect she won’t be able to find him anytime soon.
Then she spends a full minute apologizing profusely for encouraging her to go out with them and then ditching her, but Cara only waves her off.
“Stop apologizing already. None of this is your fault. Besides, you know I’d never stand in the way of your weird sex list, so please at least tell me you ticked some off tonight? ”
Sex list?
“We did.” Reagan looks at the man in the driver’s seat, then back at Cara. “Two this time.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Cara says, reaching forward to hit her friend playfully.
I realize the vehicle is finally moving as the guy driving shakes his head. “And they say guys are bad.”
“That’s because they are.” Reagan goes on about how terrible men are, but I stop paying attention because I can’t ignore the thought that forms in my mind.
Does Cara have her own sex list? And if she does, what’s on it?
But no. This woman is a nephilim. I can’t think of her that way.
I don’t mean to let my frustration seep into the open, but a low grumble travels up my throat as I mentally slap myself for being so idiotic.
The sound has Cara cooing softly. “We’re almost home, then we’ll both get cleaned up and have some rest.” She scratches behind our ear, and even though I try my best not to react, I lean into her touch. It just feels too damn good not to.
Fucking hound. If he’d let me free, then I’d pull us back from this madness.
We come to a stop in front of an apartment building that’s uncomfortably familiar because it’s my apartment building. It’s maybe a fifteen-minute walk from campus—twenty, tops. Which is exactly why I chose it.
How have I not sensed her angel blood before now? She lives in the same fucking building, close enough that I should have, even as diluted as it is.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to drop the fucking bear off at a shelter?” Reagan asks, making me release a sound that’s dangerously close to a scoff.
A bear? How dare she.
“I’m sure,” Cara replies, then adds, “It protected me out there. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if it hadn’t shown up. The least I can do is give the massive beastie a place to stay until we can track down an owner.”
“Maybe he’s with the circus,” Reagan says, making Cara laugh.
The circus? Man, I hate this woman. I have way more self-respect than to be anything like the unicycle-riding bear for human entertainment.
When we’re out of the car, Cara thanks her friends again before we head inside.
It’s weird being in the building in this form.
We take the elevator up to the sixth floor.
Cara kicks her shoes off the moment we’re inside, her feet padding softly on the floor as she flicks the lights on, revealing a two-bedroom apartment.
My own apartment—a one-bedroom—is on the fourth floor.
The layout is like mine, with an open-concept kitchen–living room, but she has a bit more square footage than I do. And, of course, a second bedroom.
How the hell does she afford this as a student?
“Come on,” Cara says, coming back into view wearing only a ratty gray robe and waving me toward the bathroom from my perch on the vinyl kitchen flooring. She must have been serious about us both getting clean.
The tub is filling up, and she checks the temperature, turning the dial slightly when it doesn’t meet her needs. I don’t really know what I expected when I agreed to go home with her, but it sure as hell wasn’t a spa day.
“I don’t have doggy shampoo, so the human stuff will just have to do, alright?”
Never in my entire life has another being bathed me in this form. It’s demeaning.
So why am I hopping into the tub?
“Is the temperature alright?” she asks, like I’m a being who understands the human language.
I should play dumb, but this entire moment is already testing my pride, so instead, I shift forward and turn the lever an inch colder with my nose.
“Who’s a smart doggy,” she says in this oddly cute, slightly infuriating voice that has my hound preening.
Damn canine instincts.
I just stand there in the tub and watch her roll up the sleeves of her robe, grab the shower nozzle, and then spray me down.
She starts at my back, then moves to my chest and front paws, being extra careful with the injured one.
It’s not a bad break—I know that. And with my quicker-than-normal healing, I should be good as new in a few days as long as I don’t re-injure it.
Damn distracting female.
With her this close to me, I study her. There’s still dried blood on her forehead from her fall, but the wound won’t need stitches.
I checked. Her hair is wet and muddy, so I can’t get a good guess on the color, but by the way the moonlight lit it up outside, I’m still fairly sure she’s blonde.
It’s her eyes that catch me off guard. They’re green, but not the deep, rich color of the forest. It’s a light, almost muted shade of green that seems to trap me.
When she moves to my hind legs, she sprays the cold water directly onto my balls, and I grunt.
“Shit, sorry.” She laughs. “I wasn’t sure if you were a boy or girl dog, but I have no doubts now. How the hell do you run around with those things?”
With ease, thank you very much. I roll my eyes. I could ask her the same thing about her tits, but that would mean shifting in her tub, and I’d rather not blow my cover yet.
Fuck. Now I’m thinking about her breasts.
The rest of my bath passes in silence until I’m clean and smelling like sweet orchids with a musky undertone. The scent has my hound wanting to pounce, and not in the same way we did with Brad.
She dries me with a towel, then makes me a bed of sheets and blankets on the floor of the living room. I get comfortable in it while she finds a bowl, fills it with water, then sets it down next to me, offering me a pat on the head.
“I’m going to shower now, so no peeing on the furniture or chewing the cushions.
” She waggles her finger in my face, and I fight the urge to growl at the gesture.
Instead, I rest my head on my front paws and close my eyes until I hear the bathroom door shut.
When the water turns on again, I get up and look around her apartment.
This would go far faster if I shifted into my human form, but I won’t risk it.
If she finds out what I am before I figure out what the hell to do with her, I’m screwed.
Her shower ends far quicker than I had hoped, and I have nothing to show for my efforts. No damning evidence to prove she knows what she is and is causing harm to humans. Not that I really believe that, anyway.
But if I don’t, what am I still doing here?
My hound. Even though he’s still blocking me from his thoughts, I know I’d have a serious problem on my hands if I tried to leave. Tomorrow I’ll demand answers from him. Tonight, we’ll rest.
Cara comes out in a pair of silk pajamas that hug her ample curves in all the right places and have the man in me drooling. If I could forget that she’s a nephilim, I mean. Her kind are evil and disgusting, and I’m definitely not physically attracted to her.
That would be ludicrous.
I get one more look at her before she turns my way, and I close my eyes, not wanting her to catch us awake.
She has a bruise forming on her arm already, and for some unknown reason, that pisses us off.
The sight of her eyes, all red and puffy, dance behind our lids.
It tells me that what happened tonight is affecting her far more than she’s letting on.
Even though my hound still has me blocked, I can feel his urge to get up and go to her. It’s almost as if her pain is his, but how could that be?
“You can sleep there tonight. Tomorrow I’ll pass flyers around to see if we can find your owners, alright?” I pretend I’m sleeping, keeping as still as possible until her footsteps stop. “Hmm. I’ll have to think up a name for you.”
Now that has my eyes flying open, connecting with hers.
My pack—especially my best friend Cooper—would have a field day if they knew what I’d been through tonight. Somehow her naming me makes it ten times more embarrassing. At least for me. I can tell my hound fucking loves the idea.
“What do you think about Nugget, or maybe Tiny? You know, cause you’re anything but small?”
I huff and turn my head. There’s not a chance in fucking hell I’ll agree to those names, and if she insists, I’ll be forced to shift and explain precisely why those names won’t work for me.
She laughs—a musical sound that I’m starting to crave hearing more than I care to admit. “You don’t like those. Got it. I’ll keep thinking.” Then she’s back in front of me, kneeling to place a kiss on the top of my head. “Goodnight.”
She walks away once more, and then in a soft voice that has my heart cracking, she says, “Thank you for saving me.”
It takes us both a long time to fall asleep.